Charles, a 30-year-old independently wealthy Londoner with an amateur interest in paleontology, is engaged to the stylish socialite Ernestina. Both are staying in Lyme Regis: she, because of her parents' strict wish that she recover from an imagined consumptive disease, and he to be with her. The novel opens with the two of them walking on the famous Lyme Bay Cobb, a stone quay, at the end of which sits a mysterious black-cloaked figure.
The figure is Sarah, commonly known as "Tragedy," or "the French Lieutenant's Woman." She has a bad reputation in Lyme Regis because of her scandalous affair with a French sailor who was shipwrecked in England and came to stay with the family whose children she was tutoring. The story goes that he promised to marry her, and she followed him to Weymouth, where she was seduced and abandoned. Whenever she can, she goes to sit at the end of the quay to look for her French lover, and wait for him to return. At the time Sarah encounters Ernestina and Charles on the Cobb, she has been living with Mrs. Poulteney for a year, acting as a companion and charitable ward of the pious and vaguely sadistic old lady.
Charles is struck by the absolute sorrow on Sarah's face, but more or less puts her from his mind until he runs into her again, when he is searching for fossils on a piece of wild land called Ware Commons. Sarah is sleeping; he approaches and wakes her. She does not respond to his apologies, and later that day, when they meet again, she firmly asks to be left to walk in peace. Sarah, upon returning home, is chastised by Mrs. Poulteney for walking in a place with such a bad reputation; that night she cries and contemplates suicide but does not jump.
Charles, Ernestina, and Ernestina's Aunt Tranter visit Mrs. Poulteney, and Sarah sits by in silence while the others discuss the impropriety of the blossoming romance between Charles' manservant, Sam, and the bubbly and feisty Mary, Ernestina's aunt's maid. Charles sides with the servants—he and Ernestina quarrel but quickly make up, and spend five uneventful days together. Charles finds himself becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the smallness of the society life he is leading, and he wonders whether he isn't making too conventional choice by marrying Ernestina and settling down with her.
Charles and Sarah keep on bumping into each other when Charles is hunting for fossils and Sarah is walking by the coast. Charles is fascinated by her and feels pity for her; one time when they meet, he offers to help her find a job somewhere away from Lyme Regis, so that she can get back on her feet. She refuses this offer. The next time she is out walking she follows him and asks him to listen to her: she wants to tell him everything that happened to the French lieutenant. He is reluctant to cross this line of respectability, but during a later encounter he hears the 'full story' of how she fell in love with Varguennes and "gave herself" to him, even after she realized that he would never marry her. The sexual tension builds between Charles and Sarah; he cannot help but imagine the scene in his mind. Despite – and because of – his attraction to Sarah, Charles advises her to leave Lyme Regis, and says that he will help pay for her travel. Sarah agrees to go, and Charles insists that they never meet alone again.
An urgent telegram arrives from Charles' uncle, demanding that Charles come visit. He learns that Uncle Robert plans to marry a younger woman, and that if she produces an heir, Charles will no longer inherit the family estate. Ernestina is furious, and Charles is also upset – he will now have to be financially dependent on his future wife.
When Charles returns to Lyme, he receives the news that Sarah Woodruff has been dismissed from Mrs. Poulteney's service, and that she has disappeared. He receives a desperate note from her, begging for one last meeting. Unsure of how to proceed, Charles visits Dr. Grogan, who offers to deal with the matter himself by meeting Sarah and bringing her to a private asylum to cure her melancholia. Charles returns home and broods about Sarah's treachery, but soon realizes that he and Dr. Grogan have both misjudged her. Desperate to make amends and to exert some free will over a situation in which he feels helpless, Charles sets out to find Sarah.
Charles finds Sarah asleep in a barn. They kiss, and Charles pushes Sarah violently away – as he rushes away from the barn, he meets Sam and Mary, and asks Sam not to mention this encounter to anyone. Charles returns to Sarah, and leaves her some money on the understanding that she will leave Lyme Regis and seek employment elsewhere. They say goodbye for what is ostensibly the last time.
When he arrives back in town, Charles visits Ernestina and explains that he must go back to London to discuss financial matters with her father; meanwhile, Sarah leaves Lyme and settles into her new life in Exeter. Charles' meeting with Ernestina's father ends with Mr. Freeman inviting his son-in-law to consider going into the Freeman family business – an idea which shocks Charles' aristocratic nature. That evening, Charles goes to his club and gets incredibly drunk. He and his friends visit a brothel, but Charles leaves early in a taxi. On the way home, he stops a prostitute who reminds him vaguely of Sarah Woodruff. He pays her and they take the taxi back to her apartment, where Charles becomes sexually aroused but then vomits on the bed after learning that the prostitute's name is also Sarah. She takes care of him and he wakes up in his own bed the following morning, very hung-over. Charles receives a note from Sarah Woodruff containing her new Exeter address.
On the train from London to Exeter, where he should change to go to Lyme Regis, Charles thinks about his future. He plans out the whole thing in his head: his dull marriage to Ernestina, their children, and his eventual involvement in Mr. Freeman's business. In an attempt to avoid this dire future, he tells Sam that they are staying the night in Exeter, and he goes to Sarah Woodruff's hotel. The tension between him and Sarah when he goes up to her room is unbearable; Charles clasps her to him and covers her with kisses. He undresses and penetrates her, ejaculating on impact. Afterwards, Charles notices a bloodstain on his shirt. He realizes that Sarah has lied about her affair with the French lieutenant: she is a virgin, or was, until Charles deflowered her. Charles is racked by guilt toward Ernestina and her father, and anger toward Sarah – why has she lied to him? Is she trying to manipulate him? Sarah will not answer his questions regarding her motives. She only says that she loves him, and she doesn't expect him to leave Ernestina for her. Charles storms out of the room.
Charles walks around Exeter, until he comes to a church and goes in to pray, despite being an atheist. After long self-examination, Charles realizes that he wants to live without caring what others around him think, and he imagines what it would be like to marry Sarah. He returns to his hotel and writes her a love letter, which he entrusts to Sam. Sam, thinking of how Charles' and Sarah's relationship would affect his prospects of marrying Mary and opening his own clothes store, chooses not to deliver the letter, and tells Charles that there was no response from Sarah.
Charles travels to Lyme Regis to break the news to his fiancée. Ernestina is predictably furious, and threatens that her father will drag Charles' name through the mud. She falls into a swoon, and Charles goes to fetch Dr. Grogan, who reproaches him harshly when he hears what Charles has done and says that he must spend the rest of his life doing penance for the harm he has caused.
When Charles tries to call on Sarah at the Endicott Family Hotel, he is told that she has left for London, without giving an address. After Charles signs a statement of guilt for Ernestina's father, in which he renounces his right to be called a gentleman, Charles spends time trying to find Sarah, to no avail. He eventually leaves for Europe, and spends almost two years roaming from country to country. Although he has been dreaming of traveling, Charles is far from happy – he realizes that he wanted to leave England with Sarah, and that exile without her is boring and meaningless. Eventually, Charles travels across the Atlantic to America, which he enjoys more than Europe: at least he is not bored anymore. One day, while in New Orleans, Charles gets a telegram from his lawyer in London: Sarah has been found.
In the first ending to the novel, the narrator describes Charles' visit to the address given by the anonymous source. Charles is let into a relatively nice house, and recognizes the artist Rossetti as he climbs the stairs to find Sarah. Sarah is dressed like a modern woman, and she tells Charles that she is Rossetti's assistant and model – there is nothing sexual or romantic in their relationship. Charles begs Sarah to come marry him, but she says she doesn't want to marry anyone – she is very happy with the life she is leading. Charles suspects that she is still suffering; he begins to angrily accuse her of bringing him there to torment him. Sarah calmly tells him that he misunderstands her. There is someone, she says, whom he should meet. Charles reluctantly agrees, and a small girl child is brought to him – he understands that she was conceived during his first and only sexual encounter with Sarah. Charles and Sarah embrace, and it seems – although we are not told explicitly what will happen – that the two will stay together.
The second ending begins with the author appearing outside Rossetti's house and rewinding the hands of a pocket watch by fifteen minutes, before leaving in a carriage. We are taken back to the point in Sarah and Charles' conversation where he accuses her of lying to him in order to hurt him. He starts to leave – Sarah touches his arm to restrain him – but he storms out of the room and out of the house. At the very end of the novel, he comes to the conclusion that life must be endured, no matter how empty or seemingly hopeless it is, and that there is no 'quick fix' that will make everything all right.
6. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a novel by Muriel Spark, the best known of her works. It first saw publication in The New Yorker magazine and was published as a book by Macmillan in 1961. The character of Miss Jean Brodie brought Spark international fame and brought her into the first rank of contemporary Scottish literature. In 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie #76 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Plot summary
In 1930s Edinburgh, six ten-year-old girls, Sandy, Rose, Mary, Jenny, Monica, and Eunice are assigned Miss Jean Brodie, who describes herself as being "in my prime," as their teacher. Miss Brodie, determined that they shall receive an education in the original sense of the Latin verb educere, "to lead out," gives her students lessons about her personal love life and travels, promoting art history, classical studies, and fascism. Under her mentorship, these six girls whom Brodie singles out as the elite group among her students—known as the "Brodie set"—begin to stand out from the rest of the school. However, in one of the novel's typical flash-forwards we learn that one of them will later betray Brodie, ruining her teaching career, but that she will never learn which.
In the Junior School, they meet the singing teacher, the short Mr Gordon Lowther, and the art master, the handsome, one-armed war veteran Mr Teddy Lloyd, a married Roman Catholic with six children. These two teachers form a love triangle with Miss Brodie, each loving her, while she loves only Mr Lloyd. However, Miss Brodie never overtly acts on her love for Mr Lloyd, except once to exchange a kiss with him, witnessed by Monica. During a two-week absence from school, Miss Brodie embarks on an affair with Mr Lowther on the grounds that a bachelor makes a more respectable paramour: she has renounced Mr Lloyd as he is married. At one point during these two years in the Junior School, Jenny is "accosted by a man joyfully exposing himself beside the Water of Leith." The police investigation of the exposure leads Sandy to imagine herself as part of a fictional police force seeking incriminating evidence in respect of Brodie and Mr Lowther.
Once the girls are promoted to the Senior School (around age twelve) though now dispersed, they hold on to their identity as the Brodie set. Miss Brodie keeps in touch with them after school hours by inviting them to her home as she did when they were her pupils. All the while, the headmistress Miss Mackay tries to break them up and compile information gleaned from them into sufficient cause for Brodie's dismissal. Miss Mackay has more than once suggested to Miss Brodie that she should seek employment at a 'progressive' school; Miss Brodie declines to move to what she describes as a 'crank' school. When two other teachers at the school, the Kerr sisters, take part-time employment as Mr Lowther's housekeepers, Miss Brodie tries to take over their duties. She sets about fattening him up with extravagant cooking. The girls, now thirteen, visit Miss Brodie in pairs at Mr Lowther's house, where all Brodie does is ask about Mr Lloyd in Mr Lowther's presence. At this point Mr Lloyd asks Rose and occasionally the other girls to pose for him as portrait subjects. Each face he paints ultimately resembles Miss Brodie, as her girls report to her in detail, and she thrills at the telling. One day when Sandy is visiting Mr Lloyd, he kisses her.
Before the Brodie set turns sixteen, Miss Brodie tests her girls to discover which of them she can really trust, ultimately settling on Sandy as her confidante. Miss Brodie is obsessed with the notion that Rose, as the most beautiful of the Brodie set, should have an affair with Mr Lloyd in her place. She begins to neglect Mr Lowther, who ends up marrying Miss Lockhart, the science teacher. Another student, Joyce Emily, steps briefly into the picture, trying unsuccessfully to join the Brodie set. Miss Brodie takes her under her wing separately, encouraging her to run away to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the Nationalist side, which she does, only to be killed in an accident when the train she is travelling in is attacked.
The original Brodie set, now seventeen and in their final year of school, begin to go their separate ways. Mary and Jenny leave before taking their exams, Mary to become a typist and Jenny to pursue a career in acting. Eunice becomes a nurse and Monica a scientist. Rose lands a handsome husband. Sandy, with a keen interest in psychology, is fascinated by Mr Lloyd's stubborn love, his painter's mind, and his religion. Sandy and Rose model for Mr Lloyd's paintings, Sandy knowing that Miss Brodie expects Rose to become sexually involved with Lloyd. Rose, however, is oblivious to the plan crafted for her and so it is Sandy, now eighteen and alone with Mr Lloyd in his house while his wife and children are on holiday, who has exactly such an affair with him for five weeks during the summer. Over time, Sandy's interest in the man wanes while her interest in the mind that loves Jean Brodie grows. In the end, Sandy leaves him, adopts his Roman Catholic religion, and becomes a nun. Beforehand, however, she meets with Miss Mackay and blatantly confesses to wanting to bring a stop to Miss Brodie. She suggests that the headmistress could accuse Brodie of encouraging fascism, and this tactic succeeds. Not until her dying moment a year after the end of World War II is Miss Brodie able to imagine that it was her confidante, Sandy, who betrayed her. After her death however, Sandy, now called Sister Helena of the Transfiguration and author of The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, maintains that "it's only possible to betray where loyalty is due." One day, an enquiring young man visits Sandy at the convent, because of her strange book on psychology. He enquires about the main influences of her school years, asking her: "Were they literary or political or personal? Was it Calvinism?" Sandy answers him, instead, by saying: "There was a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime."
